History of rapid transit

The history of rapid transit is generally considered to begin with the opening in 1863 of the Metropolitan Railway, now part of the London Underground. However, the smoke caused discomfort for passengers in operating steam trains through tunnels and limited the appeal of this mode of transport. Between 1863 to 1890 there were numerous proposals to build pneumatic or cable-hauled railways in London to overcome this problem, but none proved successful. [cite book
last = Badsey-Ellis
first =Antony
title =London's Lost Tube Schemes
publisher = Capital Transport
date = 2005
location = Harrow
pages =320
id = ISBN 185414 293 3 ] Smoke was less of a problem in steam-hauled elevated railways, starting with the The West Side and Yonkers Patent Railway in New York City in 1870 (although this line opened unsuccessfully as a cable-hauled railway in 1868). The opening of London's City & South London Railway in 1890 overcame the smoke problem by using electric traction and led to the development of electric underground railways in Budapest, Glasgow, Boston, Paris, Berlin and New York City by 1904.

The development of rapid transit technology

First tunnels

Before any plans were made for transit systems with underground tunnels and stations, several railway operators built tunnels for their trains, usually to reduce the grade of the railway line. Examples include Trevithick's Tunnel from 1804, built for the Penydarren locomotive. [Cite web|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/southeast/halloffame/historical_figures/richard_trevithick.shtml|title=South East Wales Historical Figures|work=BBC|accessdate=2006-12-01]

The first urban underground railway was the Metropolitan Railway, which began operations on January 10, 1863. It was built largely in shallow "sub-surface" tunnels and is now part of the London Underground. It was worked by steam trains, and despite the creation of numerous vents, was unhealthy and uncomfortable for passengers and operating staff. Nevertheless, its trains were popular from the start and the Metropolitan Railway and the competing Metropolitan District Railway developed the inner circle around central London (completed in 1884) and an extensive system of suburban branches to the northwest (extending into the adjoining countryside), the west, the southwest and the east (mostly completed by 1904).

Electrification

The first electrified urban railway, London's City & South London Railway underground railway, opened in 1890, in deep tubular tunnels, leading to the term "tube", which was eventually applied to the London Underground. It was originally planned to be cable-hauled, but the bankruptcy of the company that contracted to supply the cable-haulage technology forced the railway company to consider the brand-new technology of electric traction, because its Parliamentary Act prohibited use of steam power. [Badsey-Ellis (2005), p36] It operated locomotive-hauled trains with three carriages, initially without windows, because it was considered that passengers would not need to know where they were if they were in tunnels.

The UK's only elevated railway opened in 1893 in Liverpool. The Liverpool Overhead Railway was the world's fourth oldest metro and was the world's first fully-formed elevated railway to run electric trains from the start. The presence of the "El" was one aspect that earned Liverpool the nickname of "Britain's North American City" [ [http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2007/01/09/our-lost-umbrella-64375-18430304/ Our lost umbrella - Liverpool Daily Post.co.uk ] ] . The LOR was demolished in the 1950s and Liverpool is today served by a system known as Merseyrail.

The first electrically driven elevated railway was the "Columbian Intramural Railway" at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. [cite book |title=The Chicago "L" |last=Borzo |first=Greg |year=2007 |publisher=Arcadia Publishing |location=Chicago |pages=pp. 20–22 |id=ISBN 978-0-7385-5100-5 ] A major breakthrough in the development of modern electrically driven rapid transit occurred when the American inventor Frank J. Sprague successfully tested his system of multiple-unit train control (MUTC) on the South Side Elevated Railroad (now part of the Chicago 'L') in 1897. MUTC, which allowed all the motors in an entire train to be dependably controlled from a single point, freed rapid transit systems from dependence on locomotive-hauled coaches.

New Systems

Europe

The first underground railway in continental Europe was the Tünel, an underground 573-meter funicular between the quarters of Beyoğlu and Galata in the European part of Istanbul, completed in 1875 by French engineers on behalf of the Ottoman Empire. It rarely figures as continental Europe's first metro, though, partly because of its limited length, partly because the cars were pulled by horses until the line was converted to electric operation in 1910. After the Tünel, the first underground railway to be completed in continental Europe was opened in Budapest in 1896, after only two years of construction. It stretched from Gizella tér (now Vörösmarty tér, the city centre) to City Park and the local zoo, over a total length of 3.7 km (2.3 mi). It is now part of the Budapest Metro and remains largely in its original state, with new cars, but the stations restored in keeping with their original design. The route of the line remains the same except for a minor change at Deák tér and for the last two stations, which are now underground. As a result of the slightly changed route, this line connects at Mexikói út with the city's tram and bus network. It lays claim to a second title, that is the first electric underground railway with overhead cables, like the Newcastle system, rather than the more common third rail in the world. The 10.4 km (6.5 mi) Glasgow Subway in Scotland opened the same year and used cable haulage until it was electrified in 1935.

The first line of the Paris Metro opened in 1900. Its full name was the "Chemin de Fer Métropolitain", a direct translation into French of London's "Metropolitan Railway". The name was shortened to "métro", and many other languages have since borrowed this word. The Berlin U-Bahn (for "underground railway") opened in 1902; because large sections of the line were elevated, it was also called Hochbahn ("high railway") until the 1920s.

In Italy the first line was built for the 1906 World Exhibition Fair in Milan. It was an elevated light rail that linked the two main areas of the fair. The line was dismantled eight years later.

In Madrid the metro opened on October 17, 1919 under the direction of the Compañía de Metro Alfonso XIII. Metro stations served as air raid shelters during the Spanish Civil War.Today, Madrid's subway is the longer railway in the world.

North America

Boston has the oldest subway tunnel in the United States that is still in use, part of the Green Line downtown, dating from 1897. The original construction was a short four-track tunnel downtown, with only two stations, built to take light rail cars from outlying areas off the streets. Later subways in Boston carried full-size trains; the Green Line still operates with light rail equipment. In 1901, heavy rail trains began to use the tunnel as part of the original configuration of the Main Line Elevated, the first elevated railway in Boston.

The New York City Subway, which has become one of the world's largest, did not open its first section until 1904, but this was a fully independent four-track line, stretching 9 miles (14.5 km) from City Hall to 145th Street. Extensions were soon built, reaching the Bronx and Brooklyn; this is now part of the IRT system. Two major subway systems, operated by the BMT and the IND were constructed later, and many pre-existing elevated railway lines were incorporated into the BMT and IRT systems. The Hudson and Manhattan Railroad, which also opened a subway tunnel in Manhattan in 1908 and connected with New Jersey, remained a separate railroad company, and later came under the control of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as the "Port Authority Trans-Hudson" (PATH). Some New York City subway lines run on right-of-way first used in 1863 by railroads, and converted R44 subway cars run on the 1860 Staten Island Railway.

In 1907, the first line in Philadelphia, now part of the Market-Frankford Line, began running on both elevated and underground structures.

outh America

The oldest subway in the Southern Hemisphere, "Subterráneos de Buenos Aires", opened in 1913 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which is also the oldest one in Latin America and the Spanish-speaking world. [cite web | title = America: Subte (Subway) de Buenos Aires (Argentina) | publisher = UrbanRail.net | url = http://www.urbanrail.net/am/buen/buenos-aires.htm | accessdate = 2006-11-23] The "Buenos Aires Underground", colloquially and oficially known as el Subte, and particullaly Line A, with it's magnificently preserved "La burgeoise" wood and metal carriages, have been in continuous operation for 94 years, carry 190.000 passengers daily, and are a tourist attraction as well.

Asia

Asia's oldest commuter heavy rail lines are in Japan, with private companies Meitetsu railways (Nagoya) opening in 1895, and Tokyo's Keihin Kyūkō in 1896, both still serving dense urbanized areas. Asia's first cities to have subway lines are Tokyo in 1927 and Osaka in 1933. Japan's rail system is quite different from others in that the vast majority of its rapid transit is above ground, and privately owned and operated, and train stations blur the distinction between vast underground malls, corporate skyscrapers, and gigantic high rise department stores. Train stations in Japan, like highways in the US, become the center and backbone of town and create their own skyline, especially in suburbs like Saitama and Fujisawa. Other major Japanese cities also have subway systems, including Yokohama, Nagoya, Sapporo, Kobe, Kyoto, Fukuoka, and Sendai

Later expansion

The first underground in the former USSR (in Russian метрополитен "metropoliten" or метро "metro")) opened in 1935 in Moscow. The first line — between Sokolniki and Park Kul'tury — was 11.2 km long. And the project of one of the first stations, Krasniye Vorota, was awarded a Grand Prix at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris. The Moscow metro is one of the most elaborately decorated undergrounds of the world, with its stations often being called "underground palaces". (As of 2005, the Moscow metro has 278 kilometers of railways and 171 stations.) In Russia and other republics of the former Soviet Union as a whole, subways opened in Saint Petersburg (1955), Kiev (1960), Tbilisi (1965), Baku (1967), Kharkov (1975), Tashkent (1977), Yerevan (1981), Minsk (1984), Nizhniy Novgorod (1985), Novosibirsk (1986), Samara (1987), Yekaterinburg (1991), Dnipropetrovsk (1995), Kazan (2005). In Volgograd and Kryvyi Rih in 1980s a "metrotram" opened – it runs underground, along with common city trams.

In 1959, a metro system was inaugurated in Lisbon, called "Metropolitano de Lisboa". It was the first underground rail system in the Portuguese-speaking world.

In the past 30 years, a number of cities in Korea have also developed modern andextensive subway systems. The largest, Seoul, has nine lines over approximately 287 km of track. [cite web|title=Experiences in Seoul Subway Development|url=http://ita-aites.org/cms/fileadmin/filemounts/general/pdf/ItaAssociation/ProductAndPublication/OpenSession/Lee.pdf|accessdate=2006-11-27|publisher=Seoul Metropolitan Government] Pyongyang, Busan, Daegu, Incheon, Gwangju and Daejeon also have subway systems. India is rapidly expanding their urban rail systems as well.

The Toronto Subway opened in 1954. One experimental trainset consisted of the first aluminum subway cars, which reduced weight and therefore operating costs. [cite web | title = The Gloucester Series Cars (1954-1990) | publisher = Transit Toronto | url = http://transit.toronto.on.ca/subway/5501.shtml | accessdate = 2006-11-23] With the next car order in 1963, only aluminum was used. The new cars, at 75 feet/23 m, were at the time the longest in the world. The Montreal Metro, was the second subway system in Canada and was inaugurated in 1966 as part of Expo 67 that would be held in Montreal.

In Brazil, the first underground opened in 1974 in São Paulo, and now carries some four million passengers on an average weekday as part of the São Paulo Metro. Part of it consists of converted older railways; some of its stations actually date from the 1880s. Underground lines have been built also in Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Recife, Porto Alegre and Brasília.

Metro de Santiago is the metro system serving Santiago, the capital of the Republic of Chile. It is a network of five lines with a total of 85 stations.

The Washington Metro in Washington, D.C. opened in 1976, as part of changing attitudes towards transportation in the United States, leading to subway systems opening in many cities that had done without.

China's first subway system, Beijing subway, began operation in 1969. Tianjin (1984), Shanghai (1995), Guangzhou (1999), Wuhan (2004), Shenzhen (2004), Nanjing (2005), Chongqing (2005) also have rapid transit systems in operation. Chinese cities are aggressively developing or expanding their rapid transit systems.

In 1979, Hong Kong's subway line, the MTR, began operations. It currently has nine lines, including four that run underneath Victoria Harbour. By 1982, the British section of the Kowloon-Canton Railway, then known as KCR East Rail, started to provide metro-like service upon electrification was completed. 2007 saw the merger of KCR into the MTR system.

1987 saw the Mass Rapid Transit in Singapore open. It was the world's first heavy rail system to feature platform screen doors. The country made news again by having the world's first automated heavy rail system. The network has three lines with another one to be ready by 2010.

The most recently completed fully underground heavy rail metro line in North America is the LACMTA Red Line in Los Angeles, which goes from Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, through the mid-Wilshire area, East Hollywood, central Hollywood, and ending 17 miles away in North Hollywood in the San Fernando Valley. Construction was started on this line in 1986 and completed in 2000. In autumn 2005, several politicians including Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa indicated a desire to complete the originally conceived subway route along Wilshire Boulevard to West Los Angeles and Santa Monica.

References